


lullaby and good night

by AllOfThisMatter



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:09:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3444887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllOfThisMatter/pseuds/AllOfThisMatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jupiter Jones reflects on her choices as she readies for a funeral.<br/>Set a few decades after her ascension.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lullaby and good night

_When your legs are dangling over the edge of eternity, you tend to pay less attention to the breezes at your back, the sun hot on your hair… You’re only looking down, and tossing pebbles into the chasm below._

She had forgotten to visit one day, a couple of years ago. She called everyone to apologize, making up some excuse about her job, because obviously she couldn’t tell them she was settling a legal dispute between Titus and Kalique two galaxies away. They were all supposed to go picnicking in Millennium Park, and she missed it. Lost track of time, ironically enough. She’d seen pictures, had a few of them in frames in her office. The staff all laughed about them, about how endearingly peculiar their queen was, with her strange Earth customs.

She thought about that day more and more often lately, regretting ever so much more that she’d missed it as days and weeks slipped through her fingers. She hated wasting any time she had with them. Thirty-five years now had come and gone. Too fast. Too fast.

Today she was dressing for a funeral. Cousin Vassily was 88 years old. He went quietly in his sleep, the lucky bastard.

She smoothed her plain black dress and straightened the string of pearls round her neck. They looked like they were fresh water, like they could be from the Kamennaya, but they were each pulled from giant mollusks in the Astran Sea on Achare in the Kasterberous System. Her dress was commissioned from the dedicates in the oldest monastery on Kalique’s home planet of Cerise. The wedding bond on her left hand was printed with the most vibrant silver star ore ever found on this side of the verse.

Clouds of the universe drifted all around her, obscuring so much of who she used to be. Jupiter Jones was technically 58 years old. She ran a hand over her face. The same face she had worn for so long now. Young, beautiful, perfect. She and Caine hadn’t been to see her family without wearing perception filters for over 20 years now. They’d had them embedded in their skin, behind their left ears, for convenience. Her eyes drifted shut as she reached a hand to linger over the little tab. Two taps. Eyes open.

Now her black hair was shot through with silver, her eyes and mouth finely scribbled with lines, her hands knotted with stress and use. 

Sometimes she wished it was real. That she was dancing through the leaves in her autumn years, enjoying the weather before the end.

_How fast it all goes. How fast it all goes._

She had always meant to tell them. She really had. But they were so happy, so content. So sheltered from the dangers of the universe. Earth was something of a safe haven anymore. It was under Jupiter’s protection, and it was still in the very early stages of expansion. They were not yet aware of the true vastness of the universe, of the vastness of humankind amongst the stars.

How could she ever drag them from the safety of ignorance on Earth into the absolute peril of knowledge in the entire universe? How could she uproot them, and pretend it was for them, for their own good, and not for her own selfishness? That she just didn’t want to face time immemorial without her family around her?

The choice she made was not for them. It was for herself, and she had no right to force the same choice on them.

She sat down on the divan at the foot of their bed, staring at her hands; her gnarled, ancient, perception-filtered hands. _Time, time, time._

A familiar tread advanced through the doors and stopped by the bed.

“My queen,” he said softly, so softly, that distracting lupine growl rumbling beneath the words. 35 years and it still sent a shiver down her spine. That was one thing she knew would never change, even with forever looming before them. She felt it in every inch of her body, in every corner of her soul. She sighed and took his hand.

He was steadfast and sweet to his very core, and she loved every part of him. He was beautiful and perfect, all broad shoulders and golden eyes and clever, clever hands. She stood and faced him, straightening his jacket and tie, hands lingering on his chest, sliding up to cup his dear, dear face. Jupiter reached up on her tip-toes and pressed a kiss to his lips as she tapped the perception filter behind his ear.

When she opened her eyes again, he looked much more like she did. Greyed, wrinkled, weak. She plucked a pair of spectacles from his jacket pocket and gingerly settled them on his face.

“We’d better get going. Vassily’s not getting any younger,” she tried to joke, but stumbled over the tears pooling in her eyes. He wrapped an arm around her as they walked slowly toward the door. 

Alone in the lander, she laid her head on his shoulder and watched the earth as they approached. It was so lovely, a lonely sphere of blue and green and white, the Sun blazing bright behind it.

 _I have given everything for you,_ she thought, _and I would do it again._

St. Mikhail’s was beautiful in the fall, its elegant spires reaching above the ancient oaks that lined the churchyard. The service was polite, austere. Very befitting of a man such as Vassily. The wake was much less restrained, characterized by copious amounts of alcohol and shouting and dancing and laughter. Also very befitting of a man such as Vassily.

That evening she sat with her mother on the roof, peering through her telescope. Aleksa had aged so gracefully. Her hair was snow white, and braided beautifully down her back, still thick and soft. Her face was delicately traced with wrinkles, with little crow's feet and beautiful laugh lines. Her spine was still straight, her hands still strong. Her mother. Her _matb._

Aleksa pulled their blankets tighter around her daughter.

“We can’t catch cold, my girl. Not at our age,” she chuckled. “How did we get so old?”

Jupiter’s heart ached. She laced her fingers through her mother’s.

She could do it. Bring her mother with her into eternity. Just a few words. Tap off the the perception filter. Show her how it could be. How they could be together.

Aleksa sighed next to her.

“Oh, Jupiter, my girl. I’m so very tired. I can’t say I miss Vassily too much now, but I will be glad to see him when it’s time. We’ve been lucky. We’ve had it hard, but it’s been so good, my little planet. We’ve had a good life.”

She crushed a sob within her throat and pressed a kiss to her mother’s head. “Yes we have, _matb._ Yes we have.”

_The stars, oh, the stars. Oh, they shone that night and they wept, the heavens ablaze with their glory and the moon heavy with their grief. Eternity smiled down at her, and she smiled back, sorrowful but sure, and soon to let everything she used to know pass into oblivion. She would remember them. And she would endure._

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Jupiter Ascending or any of its characters.


End file.
